The original title was Lowkey Freaking Out, which should give you a taste. This zine deals with the anxiety engendered by AI, responding to the "permanent underclass" meme.
The point of the actual title is not that hope is ill-founded, per se, though it may be; the point is that optimism is propulsive and thus useful, even when ill-founded.
Load-bearing delusions fascinate me because the math must check out on some level, otherwise everything would have tumbled down already, collapsing like a shoddy railway trellis. Hey, maybe that's still going to happen. Maybe we're all destined for a heap of splintered beams plucked from somebody's eyes.
But if you never bet on a positive outcome, you'll never experience one.
The PDF is $3 and the print version (plus the PDF) is $13. Get it here.
Featuring contributions by @moldbugchaser, Nate "Igor" Smith, and Timothy Wilcox.
One way to handle the fear is just don't think about it.
Another way is to think about it deeply, intimately. Get to know it really well. Because the truth can't hurt you. Whatever hurt you're going to feel, you're will feel either way, whether you know what's coming or not.
So think about it. The ways things could go wrong. "Bad to worse." Worse could be so bad, but maybe you'll head toward better instead. A coin flip lands, it won't flip forever.
Dread. Under your collar, it clings to your skin.
Wash it off but it comes back again.
Because you're the responsible one. These two little boys are counting on you, in ways they don't realize because that's how little and vulnerable they are.
They think everything will be okay. So that's something you can think too. If it dispels the fear for a moment. Can't let it get the best of you!
Just don't think about it. Then think about it very hard. Whichever gets you moving on that day. Feel what you need to feel to push further in a useful direction.
(Not an excerpt, but written in the same spirit as the zine.)
The header art is a portrait by Vivian Maier, 1954, via NBC.
